


And Died So

by shakespearespaz



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:37:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If guilt was transferrable by grasping hands on a flush body, she had fallen long ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Died So

Miles noticed Bass' wandering eyes within the first month.

He was used to Monroe’s appreciative gazes, which never failed to take in carefully the note-worthy women they met. But as the subject of many himself, Miles also knew when his friend was serious.

Secure enough in their bond, he was normally prepared to let Bass gallivant into bed with any lady he wanted without second thought. His brother’s warm, willing wife, however, still wandered cautiously through the rooms where they let her roam, on edge and as aware of Miltia horror stories as any citizen.

He wasn’t going to let either of them take advantage of her.

Her devotion to Ben was sweet, Miles thought, but she slowly revealed a sharpness that he’d never seen in her before. At the end of a long day, when he and Bass would invite her as their guest to dine with officers, she held her own in conversation strewn with military jargon.

He would watch Bass watching her send quiet quips across the table. These acts of defiance were subtle, but were enough to show that she was much quicker than some of the fools they had settled on for captains, majors and colonels.

After a time, unlike the officers who averted their eyes when Miles and Bass left together, she would offer them a kind (but in its truth and sincerity laced with venom), “Sleep well.”

Miles did not know whether he wanted to break her or preserve her.

She moved something in him, although he knew how wrong it was. He also knew that she moved something in Bass too and that he lacked the relationship to her which restrained Miles. Just as they desired each other, she they both desired, her body, her mind, her inability to play by their rules, while still half-terrified of what they could do to her.

They brought her with them as the battles moved east and then north.

She refused to be complicit in their slaughter, but did her own part to help with the wounded on both sides.

Bass would spare the ones she tended to with some twisted, medieval sense of honor. Miles would spend evenings in her tent with the intent of questioning her about the Blackout, but often their conversations morphed into weary silences, both too exhausted as they tried to pick caked mud and blood off their worn clothes.

As they neared what was once the Canadian border, a late snow flurry coated the camp. A skirmish with the northern forces was anticipated within the next week.

“What are you writing?”

Miles watched Rachel across the living room of the ancient stone house he had claimed as commander.

She did not respond to him and he continued lacing his boots; he could find out later by confiscating it. As he shuffled around for his coat, she laid her pencil and book down.

“Happy birthday,” she told him quietly.

Miles looked up, his brain too focused on war doing rapid mental math.

“It is…how did you…”

“3.14. Pi day. Ben would never say so but he’s still jealous, being the geek he is. I always remember it because he liked bringing the kids pie before the Blackout.”

“And after?”

Bass’ voice startled them in the doorway, but he was curious not malicious.

“They still have pie, don’t they?”

“A woman in our community used to cook some, if we could find ripe fruit or had some preserves left over from winter.”

“You didn’t make them?” Bass asked.

“You wouldn’t want me to make them.”

He laughed, his genuine grin unthreatening.

“You ready, Miles?” he asked, as if they were two boys about to go play in the snow, not drench it red.

“Don’t die on your birthday,” Rachel stated softly as the two stomped out the dusty hallway and down to the encampment.

Spring took its time in arriving, but they managed to return to Philadelphia right as the heat of early summer began. The thunderstorms that showered the city made them thankful for the comforting smell of wet pavement over the ankle deep mud of traversing the wild landscape.

Once safely ensconced in Independence Hall, Miles and Bass both noticed Rachel growing impatient again. She would pace the corridors briskly despite the heat or disappear into her room, spending hours lying on her bed, eyes studying the same plaster mold on the ceiling again and again.

She dared not ask the question, for fear of what the predestined answer would do to her.

Desperate to find a place and task for her, Miles drew up a theoretical battle plan and brought it to her for advice. She had seen much of what they’d seen, but still he expected her to push it back in his face.

She took it with interest, boredom winning out over common sense.

It was only when he and Bass returned from another campaign and she learned that he had used her logic regarding attacks which caused the most carnage that she realized her folly.

“I will not be part of this!” she would recall shouting furiously at them, smashing a rare oil lamp near Bass’ feet with an angry throw.

She would never be like them, Miles concluded, the thought both a waste and a relief.

It was another summer before he kissed her, and if she had known it, she would’ve been able to taste the remnants of Bass on his tongue. It felt deceitful, not to share her with him, but Rachel would not be shared; she needed make that decision on her own or it would mean nothing.

Heavy clouds drew over the city almost weekly, the humidity so high that the inhabitants were practically begging the water to fall from the sky.

Bass found Rachel lost in thought in the archway between the main hall and west wing, watching a flock of pigeons dart nervously about.

He disturbed her.

“I wish it would hurry up and rain.”

She turned to look at him, blonde wisps clinging to the side of her face and neck, the weather disallowing her hair to do anything other than curl wantonly. Bass could relate.

“Me too.”

She raised a sweaty eyebrow.

“Don’t you have a republic to run?”

“It’s my lunch break. And you?”

“I’m free. Free as a bird. It’s an advantage of being a captive.”

This was the point in their conversations where Bass usually became unsure whether she was flirting with him or wanted to snap his neck.

Maybe it was a bit of both he decided when moments later she wove her fingers crudely through his hair and pulled him into the downpour in a relentless kiss.

No one wanted three bodies in a bed together until at least October.

Autumn brought the worry of winter, but also a revitalizing freshness. Mild afternoons gave into the crisp of evening and Rachel found the two kept later nights, either at work or play she did not know.

She finally entered their room as an orange dusk settled over the city, two pairs of eyes meeting her, expecting and eager. Brown ones caressed gently, but icy blues undressed.

Miles moved first, cupping her face to meet his lips. Bass took care with the buttons on her light blouse.

She should have been less surprised at how fluidly they worked together, given that their partnership had conquered a quarter of the country.

Hands merged together, lacing through hair, and lusty sinews stumbled until together they found the solidity of the table. She was the new variable in their equation and felt the hesitance in the fingers that danced down her spine and across her pale stomach.

But as much as they wanted to explore, passivity was not on her mind.

They mapped onto her skin the cities they conquered, light and tantalizing and gentle, but she marked them with the damage they could never undo, with teeth and nails and bloody lip.

The three came, together then apart, a puzzle box of limbs and tongues and muscle, quiet except for heavy breaths that built hasty and shallow, tickling warm heat against their bareness.

Only when they kissed each other over her sweaty and used body, did helplessness clutch at her. Conflict stirred low and trapped between the two lovers who ran the world, she wondered if there had ever been a moment that she was not already lost to them.

They took her to bed again that night and when finished, let her stay.

Rachel found them as comforting as lovers as they were passionate, on lazy nights content to simply hold the sacrificial lamb that had crawled under their covers.

Bass liked her hair and Miles her lips, but she would entwine his hand with hers and paid Bass back for every tugged curl equally. She knew that for their part, the duo could have a conversation with their eyes alone.

Winter was upon them too soon, but the cold halted the most pressing matters of invasion. Enemies to the south were still a constant threat, but many northern folks found little option but hibernation.

The freezing temperatures of a long, dry cold spell made it easy to forget who she shared her bed with. Warm bodies were warm, even if she conjured up her memories of how they stole such warmth from others.

She lay with killers and tried to ignore the fact that she was technically one too. If guilt was transferrable by grasping hands on a flush body, she had fallen long ago.

But as they whirled around each other, three points in their endless dance, the trio still had further to fall.

They lasted through spring again, and summer and fall and winter and spring.

Miles left in the sixth spring of Rachel’s captivity.

Bass watched it happen, mesmerized but arrested as his friend, his brother and lover slipped slowly away. Their individual encounters less frequent, Rachel became the glue holding their intimacy together.

Still, Miles’ eyes glazed over as the three thrust into one another on an evening that should have been a cause of celebration. Winter was over, but he was no less dreary and self-absorbed, entertaining dangerous thoughts to cross his mind.

Nothing infected Bass more than the desire to rekindle the fire and companionship that had once burned through them as casually as blood. Or to simply bring Miles back to the reality of their power.

He reached for Rachel and the back of his hand made brutal, unsolicited contact with her face.

The distant look was gone but so was much more.

Miles grew instantly protective, annoyingly so to Bass, and although it would be a while before the head of the Monroe Militia would ever physically harm Rachel Matheson again, he found she made an apt scapegoat as the cause of Miles’ doubts.

He missed the days of just the three in lust, when Rachel would crack a smile paired with a soft, sad laugh or Miles would crack a wry joke, eyebrow arching, and excess clothing would reach the ground in moments.

That was why he sent Baker out on a private mission to locate an apothecary (with most modern medicine unavailable, tried and true methods prevailed).

It would only be two instead of three, but he would at least have Miles back and he looked forward to finally acquiring real answers from Rachel concerning the Blackout. It was a shame that he and she would not continue something together, but he could not do that, not after what he was about to do to her.

He insisted to be the one to administer the draft; its effects were instantaneous and slipping it in her wine at dinner would be too obvious.

Bass entered her room filled with warm spring moonlight, creaking hinges and the soft gush of air that shifted through his curls marking him an intruder in his own complex.

Silently he stirred her, cradling the hair he’d grown so fond of and tipping the ornate bottle offensively into her mouth.

He forced her, struggling, to swallow.

She had no time to speak but her clear blue eyes asked why with such pain and panic that as they fluttered shut, he had to close his and inhale deeply to stop tears from escaping.

In that moment, she thought she would never wake again.

Rachel Matheson had died to two of three, shattering forever their fragile triangle, but the cracks to split sanity were only just beginning.


End file.
